When Feminist Falls in Love with Queer: Dan Mei Culture as a Transnational Apparatus of Love

Abstract

Dan Mei, a Chinese subculture centered on fictional homoromantic/homoerotic relationships between beautiful young men, is part of the growing global queer fandom cultures. Approaching Dan Mei as a transnational "apparatus of love," this article intends to carve out new directions and dimensions for the emerging queer fandom studies, and identify the social institutions, markets, political regimes, and ideological ends that shape and condition the varied forms and formulations of queer love central to neoliberal governance. Using the analytical framework "apparatus of love," I argue that as manifestation of social forces tied into and varying with historical specificities and sociocultural contingencies, love can be heavy. As analytics that equip us to investigate how these social forces, specificities, and contingencies shape and reshape different manifestations of love, love can be light also. Building on ethnographic data supplemented by textual analysis, I illustrate how Dan Mei communities are developed through the production and sharing of queer love, and how female fans have produced alternative gender and sexual articulations to challenge China's neoliberal governance driven by heteronormative gendered biopolitics. This subculture, however, also fuses with the emerging transnational normative queer culture, reproducing the middle-classed normativity of queerness to advance neoliberal dominance on new levels.

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